Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has fired the country's energy minister for shortcomings in his work.

Turkmenistan's State Information Agency posted information on August 22 that Geldi Saryev, the country's energy minister since January 2014, had been dismissed and his deputy Davranmamed Rejepov had been appointed take his place.

Berdymukhammedov reportedly told Saryev, "You've been working in the post of minister for more than a year and during this time you've been warned three times about your bad work, but the work of the ministry has not improved."

Berdymukhammedov said there had been power outages. "The population has sent numerous complaints," the president said.

Berdymukhammedov continued, "Investigations were carried out that uncovered many violations – lack of control over use of electricity, a multitude of unregistered consumers, and illegal use of electric energy."